


the ghost beside us

by nutellamuffin



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst, Aslan's Country, Drabble, and what if caspian was alone for 80 years instead of having lilliandil, i know we all like to think he did but what if he DIDN'T, maybe i ignored some canon and maybe i didn't, we have more of caspian suppressing his emotions in this one lads, what if edmund really didn't come back, who knows anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin
Summary: caspian waits his whole life for edmund to come home and he doesn’t.
Relationships: Caspian/Edmund Pevensie
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	the ghost beside us

caspian waits his whole life for edmund to come home and he doesn’t. and when he dies, he is not smiling; he will have to wait no longer, he knows, but what he does not know is what he expects instead.

and he is standing there, of course he is, when the seafarer walks through the doorway. (he does not hesitate as he would’ve thought he might’ve. he steps right through and does not look back.) as he approaches the person he taught himself not to miss, he is not looking at him. he is looking at the grass, and how it seems too clean to be nature.

edmund starts when he sees the other. perhaps he came here decades older than when edmund did, but he did not expect to see him so soon. (and he notices how he’s glancing away, he notices how his hair frames his face just right so that he cannot see his eyes, he notices how caspian’s stance is taught in a world where he should be all forms of relaxed.)

he does not start with a hello. they are well past hello, they are well past pleasantries and icebreakers. they have lived through wars with each other and that is what they know, they learned how the other wielded a sword before their favourite colour, they learned what part of their past haunts the both of them before their hobbies.

instead, he asks the one thing that hangs in the air above their heads.

“did you wait for me?” edmund whispers, looking over caspian’s face when the wind brushes his hair out of the way. he is young again but he is worn, oh so worn, weary and tired and windswept. “all that time, you were waiting?”

caspian would’ve thought he wouldn’t be able to look edmund in the eyes at this moment. (perhaps because he thought he might be in his arms, perhaps because he thought he wouldn’t be able to see through his tears, or the fabric of edmund’s shirt as he held him against his chest. but he can see him now. and so he looks, just once.)

“of course i did.”

there is a silence that chokes them for a moment, where caspian has admitted everything he’s denied for the past eighty years in one sentence, and edmund has finally asked the question he’d been dying to know for three, and they are both standing side by side when they are convinced they shouldn’t be.

“caspian,” edmund says then, and he seems so forlorn, “caspian, i tried. you don’t know how much i wished to come back. but aslan-”

caspian shakes his head, as if to say he already knows. which he did. in a way, he’d known for years, he’d known the second the lion pulled the curtain of water over them, he’d known the first time three years was up and they hadn’t returned. “you looked at me as you were leaving and i just thought . . .”

“i know what you thought.” edmund says, softer, and caspian wants to look at him so badly but he doesn’t. (he wishes to see the same gentle face he looked at under the stars, and yet, he knows it will not be the same one. not entirely.) “and i’m sorry.”

the seafarer looks out on the horizon and wonders where the wind comes from that blows the clouds across blue skies. he does not look at edmund, still, and he can feel the other king’s eyes boring into his head, and he knows he is wishing that caspian will look back at him, but he won’t.

“i’m sorry, too.”

this is not how caspian would’ve thought his death would go.


End file.
